DR UK comments on Lord Freud debate

Mon,27 October 2014
News Equality & Rights

Breaking through low expectations – comments from Disability Rights UK following the debate triggered by comments of Lord Freud

Disability Rights UK believes that what matters to disabled people is whether any of the political parties have serious policies to enable more disabled people to get decent work, at and above the minimum wage. We urge politicians on all sides of the House to focus on that.

Given very low expenditure on employment support for disabled people, a Work Programme that is largely failing disabled people, and a successful programme – Access to Work – that is subject to cost constraints rather than significant investment, we do not see the kind of powerful programmes to enable us as disabled people to succeed at work that we want and need. Current policy puts the incentives for success not on the employers to create jobs accessible to disabled people, or on disabled people to build their skills and seize opportunities, but on the intermediaries - the providers of support. This is not working.

If this and the next Government are serious here are some of the things they could do:

  • Pursue a multi-faceted strategy to break the link between disability and poverty, that links education, skills, employment and tax and benefits – as recommended by the JRF - http://www.jrf.org.uk/a-uk-without-poverty
  • Mend the crisis in the progression of many young disabled people from education to work. Build on positive progress where it exists – for instance, the significant improvement in 19-year old disabled people's qualifications and in numbers taking up apprenticeships. If this progress is sustained through employer incentives for work experience and apprenticeships it should help more disabled young people to gain sustainable employment and prevent a new generation being out of work for life
  • Incentivise employers to employ and promote more disabled people – not through communications campaigns (as now) but through the power of contracts – only giving contracts to companies with good records in employing disabled people; and expecting large companies to be transparent about how many disabled people they employ at different levels, as they do in relation to the number of women on Boards. The Government could set an example as a procurer, tenderer and commissioner
  • Give newly disabled people the opportunity of an assessment of aspirations and requirements and then connect them to Access to Work support to help them retain their jobs and thus enable employers retain their skills and experience
  • Completely change the employment support system. Put budgets, and power, in the hands of disabled people and employers; enable disabled people to have a personal budget so they can select the support that will work for them as individuals – pooling all their specialist disability employment money (currently spent on Access to Work and Work Choice) and money for skills. This has been shown to be effective in Holland and would work far better than one-size fits all courses that people are 'sent on'
  • Scale up peer support so disabled people learn from others who are progressing in their careers. Connect and network disabled people so that they can increasingly find solutions to their own challenges
  • Radically change the Work Capability Assessment so you first ask people if they can work and if so what they need – and get moving on delivering it – rather than demoralising people first by asking them what they cannot do against a backdrop of fear of loss of benefit. Fear is not conducive to taking risks to try new types of work
  • Make the right to work (enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) a reality – by putting Access to Work and related budgets on a statutory footing, so people get the support they need to work
  • Treat disabled people as having qualities and talents that employers want, to counter negative media portrayals. Promote disabled people's capabilities and attributes such as resilience, problem solving, empathy: it is no good being passive to negative media portrayals of disabled people and then expecting that employers will see them as being ideal employees

DR UK is meeting all the main political parties to promote effective employment strategies. We recently helped stop a proposed change on Disabled Students' Allowance likely to have a negative impact on disabled people's learning and are now pressing Government to fix the significant problems with Access to Work.